For the longest time, she only knew dark. Dark, choking dust and clouds snuffing out all light save for the cracks of lightning.

Or so her brain perceived them as. The flashes grew more insistent, wavering in and out of her line of sight. Behind her eyelids the seemed blue, the same shade as… file not found. Her brain didn't tick anymore, no whirs from her body, no clicks. Just breathing. She took one more breath and her heart beat. Her blood shifted through the circuitry of her body.

Circuits. Synthesis.

Open. The command came from her brain, the processor, the motherboard. Her heart made it so. Her eyes fluttered, and the glowing green irises of Commander Artemis Shepard opened for the first time, synthesized. Nothing blurred. The lights did not hurt her eyes. They just… adjusted accordingly. Her vision was sharper too, taking in the detailed rubble of London from distances she never could have fathomed before. She groaned, blinked, groaned again. She lay saddled in a heap of broken cement. She dared not move. Her mind told her several broken bones were in the process of reknitting. Her mind gave her a percentage of completion rate. She told the numbers to fuck off. She didn't need a reminder.

There were other forms far away, searching with lights. Another consciousness scratched at the recovering border of her own. It sounded frantic, fleeting, reaching. It asked permission for location; she did not know how to respond. This is too inorganic, she thought. She looked down, carefully, at her broken arm. She saw the trailing lines of green circuitry course over her body, then fade. The computerized thoughts changed too. Her body stopped reading the statistics of functions at her. It stopped telling her the shift in her blood pressure. She sighed, feeling better with the quieter mind.

"I found someone!" Noise. "Looks like an N7 oper… by the gods." She looked up. The soldier looked down at her, green omnitool in hand, shining its light over Shepard's broken body.

"What is it lieutenant!" someone called back.

The man stumbled back, looked away. "Get me T'soni!" Liara. "I want to be sure it's her!"

She looked past the man. Liara. The name. That was the consciousness brushing against her own. It expanded, reached through her barriers. Images. Liara. Love. "…I repeat, we found a female N7 operative, badly wounded, needs medical attention."

"Shepard!" The scream. It spiked in her mind and in her ears. It spoke within her soul. She tried to get up. She could feel Liara's heart pounding. She saw the asari running after her, pushing things this way and that with her biotics. As the blue woman approached her, Shepard tried to keep her eyes open. She felt warmth flood her limbs. Life. Pulse. Not so computerized.

Liara.

Her love bent over her, tears streaming down those blue cheeks. Kisses on the edge of time. A spark of life. Heartbeat.

"Liara," she said. Her lover reached a hand out to touch her.

Skin. Still soft. Still pleasurable.

Entering maintenance cycle. Her eyes closed. All dark.

Maintenance complete.

"…don't know how to explain it. She just is." More voices. The minds in the room arced and sparked against her own. One sensed her; no, it was attached. Familiar but different, it fluttered in the center.

"The cat scans are off the damn charts though, more than any other human we've analyzed since Crash Day. It looks more like that Prothean's brain scan… or an asari's. Still not a match to anything on our records."

Shepard opened her eyes again. A cracked ceiling stared back. She felt Liara's hand in hers. She squeezed it. "You're awake!" Liara gasped. Shepard smiled, looking up at her blue beauty. The process hurt. Her love looked down at her, battered to say the least. A scar swathed in medigel ran across the asari's cheek and the blue skin was clearly bruised in many places.

"Liara," she said. The asari laughed down at her. It sounded broken too.

"Is that the only word you remember?" she asked. Her eyes shone like she might cry and her voice strained. Her mind still lingered in Shepard's, a constant companion.

"I remember all of them," she said. Her throat hurt. "Water?" she asked. Shepard looked around. She lay in a crumbling room with pieced-together medical equipment thrown everywhere. Tubes ran into her arms and her legs were tightly bound to the cot. She saw two men in dirtied lab uniforms. The scientists stared, baffled. She was aware of Liara's steely glare at them. One thought resonate clearly in her consciousness.

Get out. Shepard did not think the doctors heard, but they left anyways, nodding at the commander and Liara and shutting the door behind them as best they could on broken hinges. Once alone, Liara leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. She gasped. More thoughts. I love you.

"I love you," she said. Liara pulled back and raised an eyebrow.

"You heard that?" she asked. Shepard blinked.

"Am I not supposed to?" she asked. Liara shook her head.

"I do not think so. I mean, sometimes asari can share thoughts at close range with another asari bondmate, but humans could never do this."

Shepard nodded. This hurt her neck. "I doubt I can be considered human anymore," she said. "Water?"

Liara nodded and this time turned in her chair and fetched a nearby pitcher of water. She grabbed a metal cup and tipped the liquid into it carefully before she set the pitcher aside. She leaned forward, trying to hand Shepard the glass. Shepard lifted her arm, but groaned and laid it back by her side again. "Here," said Liara. She slipped her free hand behind Shepard's head, fingers intertwining with the brown strands of hair. She helped Shepard sit up against the hard cement wall and raised the cup to her lover's lips. Shepard felt the water touch her lips and slither past, scorching down her throat. She gulped slowly. Swallowing felt like a long forgotten labor.

Intake complete.

Stop that, she thought at herself. Liara lowered the cup. She felt the asari's mind shift against her own. "Thank you," she said. Liara placed the cup aside. She looked at Shepard intensely, almost in disbelief. "What?" she asked.

Liara looked down, then back at her. "It's just… so hard to believe, Shepard," she said. "You were, I mean, when I saw you go up into the citadel… I did not think…" Her eyes shone again. A tear crawled down her cheek, stopping at the medigel infusion.

"Oh Liara," she said. She tried to lift her hand again. The asari took it and squeezed it once more.

"I just," she said, drawing in a shuddery breath, "You are here, alive, goddess willing, it's more than I ever hoped for." She felt Liara's other hand cup her cheek.

"You can't expect less from Commander Shepard," she said. She tried smiling again. Her muscles did not protest quite as much.

Liara laughed softly. "No, I suppose I cannot," she said. Her hand dropped from Shepard's cheek and joined the other one holding her hand. She looked at the medical equipment. "You don't know what it has been like, Shepard," she said. "You disappeared into the crucible, and then this light, a brilliant green light engulfed everything."

Synthesis.

"And then… the war was over," Liara said. She stared past Shepard at nothing. "The reapers stopped, flew themselves up and away. They are… not dead, but they are no longer active. Reports from all over the galaxy say that the reapers are floating in space, unmoving. No one knows why."

"They won't hurt anyone," Shepard said. "I made sure of that."

Liara studied her. Shepard rubbed her fingers against her lover's bare palms. "I trust you, Shepard," she said. "No one knows what to do though. Any weapons fired at them do nothing, and we dare not approach them for study." She paused. Shepard sensed anguish in her lover. "The mass relays were destroyed as well," she said. "Whole fleets are stranded in this system."

Error. "That's not good," said Shepard.

"No," said Liara, "It's not." She paused. "Shepard, what happened?"

Shepard closed her eyes. She breathed in, remembering the citadel. The starchild, more like a hallucination, and her choices all lay out before her. "I don't know how to describe it," Shepard said. She raised her arm one more time. It stayed up. She cupped Liara's unscarred cheek and pulled her lover's forehead to her own. "Let me show you," she whispered. Their foreheads touched and the memories streamed in between them, flashing by quickly. She felt Liara's mind pull all the strands in, delving deeper and deeper into Shepard's memories until no more remained for her to pull. As their minds mingled, Shepard thought back to that brief instance before the final battle. Kisses on a starry edge. A double-heartbeat within Liara.

Her lover pulled away with a gasp, eyes fluttering open, shining green with data for a moment before simmering back into blue. Shepard opened her own shining eyes. Liara stared down at her. She did not know what to think. "It explains so much," the asari whispered.

"Like what?" Shepard asked.

"Your brain activity, for one," Liara said. She smiled bitterly. "It's moving faster than a supercomputer."

"Thinking like one too," said Shepard grimly.

Liara paused, giving her lover a strange look. Shepard shook her head and the asari continued, "It's not only you. Everyone's genetic structure has been… altered. Like data has been encrypted on our DNA… Synthesis, as your memories suggest." She squeezed Shepard's hand once more. "But you are the most enhanced by far, which would make sense since you were the catalyst of everything."

"What do you mean by enhanced?" Shepard asked. Her brain tried to rattle statistics at her again.

"Well, for one it took us a week to find you out in the rubble," said Liara. "Your body should have… deteriorated by then," her voice grew more scientific, less attached, "but when we found you, many of your injuries had begun to heal. All surface wounds had closed, no infections, and your bones had reset themselves and were beginning to grow together again."

"Lucky me," said Shepard, her tone bitter. She felt somewhat wary of her body's newfound abilities.

"It's beyond luck, Shepard," Liara said. "Your synthetic implants underwent rapid evolution during synthesis. Whatever happened to you, we do not know the full ramifications yet, but the doctors seem to think you might be capable of interfacing with the reapers in stasis-"

"What?"

"I know, but listen," Liara said. Shepard felt her lover's own confusion and fear mingle with hers. "The reaper code being transmitted from the inactive ships… it resembles the patterns in your mind."

"So I can control them?" Shepard asked. She did not like implications behind this.

"Possibly," said Liara. "The scientists want you available for testing and research as soon as you are able. I have been… arguing with them over this."

Shepard groaned and closed her eyes. "Thank you," she said. "That's the last thing I need right now."

"At the same time though," said Liara. She hesitated before continuing. "It's difficult. You may be the key to unlocking use of the reapers, perhaps even helping us rebuild the relays, which needs to be done as soon as possible."

Relay reconstruction possible through 4.6- Shepard shut out the thought. "You're right," she said. "Whatever happened when I jumped into the crucible, the reaper's technology embedded itself in my brain… not like indoctrination," she told Liara when her lover cast a worried look at her. "More like a… compromise, or a dying gift. Whatever was at the heart of that AI, it's in me now."

"So you see why it might be necessary for you to provide assistance as soon as possible," Liara said. "If we could extract the information from you somehow, then we could send instructions to the other systems, resume full intergalactic travel in a matter of months."

"We could help rebuild Thessia," said Shepard. Liara nodded. There was that shine again. "Let's not worry about that right now. Let's relax while we can."

Liara blinked and nodded. "Alright Shepard," she said. Carefully, she helped Shepard move to one side of the cramped cot so she could lay down beside her lover. Shepard groaned and lay back on the thin pillow. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply as she felt Liara settle down next to her. She smelled the asari's sweet scent as her lover tucked her head into her neck. As they drifted further and further into sleep, Shepard felt the walls between their minds blur and they slipped into one another as dreams overcame them. Two heartbeats beating together as one. Beat one, beat two. Three heartbeats.

Shepard opened her eyes and looked down at her lover. By the gods. "Liara," she said quietly. The asari looked up from her half asleep composure. "You're pregnant."